"We do not want a new edition of that stuff; enough of it forever; the labor of hearing it is worse than the galleys-les travaux forcés. You should be, yourself, in our place." At the time the division on the authorization to prosecute was called—

of the committee with the country, and might well | took to read to them some pages of his book on rely on the incredulity of the house in regard to the Organization of Labor, a chorus up-rose— all the alibis, protestations, and sentimentalities of the convicted conspirators. They had done enough in delivering these leading spirits to the common sense of the nation and the judgment of history. Ledru-Rollin uttered some curious notions touching American situation. "You know perfectly well," said he, "that socialism desires the dissemination of property; this is right; for all republics of antiquity and the middle ages perished by the concentration of property. At this day, that magnificent, that gigantic country, America, is keenly alarmed by the concentration of property. (Denials from the floor.) It would be difficult for me, you conceive, to answer interruptions which I cannot well understand; I have said, and I repeat it, and I shall not be contradicted by those who are aware that at this period, in North America, property suffers by concentration, and that the people demand, not an agrarian law, but the distribution of the public domain of the state; the cry from one pole to the other is, Land is liberty!" He gave the English phrase. The Americans have a fine chance of liberty enough, on this maxim.

Great agitation was manifested whilst the vote was going on, and whilst the secretaries were reckoning the bulletins, the members collected in groups on the floor, conversing and gesticulating with great energy. It was now broad daylight and the appearance of the chamber, with the decaying lights in the lustres, the worn look of the ladies in the galleries, (which continued crowded to the close,) and the feverish agitation of the house, presented a strange and unpleasant spectacle.

Three of the most intelligent and observing members of the Assembly passed some hours with me on Sunday last, at St. Germain. They related various pleasant incidents of the long sitting; and, among these, the following, which has found its way into a journal. At noon, on Friday, two young and handsome ladies requested one of the Some of the provisional government attempted, sergeants (huissiers) stationed in the galleries, to in their depositions, to throw from their own summon their husbands, members, to place them shoulders, on those of Cavaignac, the minister of in proper seats. The gentlemen named came at war, the blame of insufficient military preparation once, welcomed their partners, and handed them to for the insurrection of June. He did not deign to the reserved benches. A short time after, two exculpate himself, which he might have done; he other matrons, not quite so richly and gaily atwould not censure in his turn; he left the govern- tired, appeared, and requested the huissier to anment to its fate in public opinion. When the nounce them, in the same quality, to the two attorney-general demanded formally the prosecution representatives; he stared, and replied that the of Caussidière and Blanc before the civil and mil-wives of the gentlemen had just been seated by itary tribunals, Dupin moved the simple order of them; the new comers betrayed lively surprise, the day on the report and testimony, to get rid of and looked at each other significantly; they insistthe political question or case. The committee re-ed that the representatives should be called; they quired no solemn sanction of their work; no one had travelled a hundred leagues, having been mistook the sense of the majority. The two con- alarmed for the safety of their lords by the dreadspirators were consigned to the attorney-general ful reports. The husbands again obeyed the sumfor the transactions of May, but they were set free mons; the parties embraced at once with edifying for those of June, because the latter would subject fondness. The bystanders, among whom were them to the courts-martial- -a jurisdiction not some colleagues, did not learn the éclaircissements relished by the Assembly. The Mountain clam- by which the real wives were propitiated. Possiored, hooted, whistled, as soon as Cavaignac bly, the gentlemen, not expecting the advent of finished his impressive claim for the arraignment the latter, had allowed them to be personated, in of Caussidière and Blanc. order to place favorite acquaintances. On the 28th, the heat was so oppressive in the hall, that the body, in three hours, melted away to less than a quorum, and abandoned all business.

A member has observed to me-"We were, in fact, five hundred for all rigor of treatment; but some two hundred are timid, and the Montagnards are seventy or eighty." A mystery remains-the The three visitors above mentioned, spoke freely escape of Blanc and Caussidière; they might of the characteristic traits of the National Assembly. have been arrested with due activity; connivance Its general composition is moderate and conservaon the part of the executive is suspected, naturally tive, with a very respectable quantum of intellienough; flight would serve as conviction; their gence, knowlege, business-skill and habit, and trial might prove an occasion of bitter feuds personal intrepidity: but so large a multitudeand popular disorders. You will see that Blanc nine hundred-have not, even yet, become propreached Belgium where he was arrested and im-erly acquainted with each other; the best men prisoned; and then speedily released by order of have not therefore a confidence of unity and nuthe Belgian government. The chartists alone are merical strength: the distribution into external likely to welcome him in England. He fatigued clubs-réunions-estranges them by hundreds, the National Assembly excessively by his long- and lessens individual independence in the common worded and monotonous defence; when he under-discussions and action of the Assembly-each ré

union exacting fealty to the opinions and plans of its chiefs or its majority. Five or six hundred are sincere and zealous as to the adoption and fair trial of a republican constitution; the reasons, however, for distrusting the practicability of a republic, seem to them stronger than the grounds of hope. The president of the committee on the constitution remarked a few days before, gravely, to one of my guests, "You will see that we shall have less liberty under the republic, than we enjoyed under the monarchy." At a recent levee of President Cavaignac, he said to an officer just returned from Bordeaux, "You have a good number of republicans in your city." "Not one, my general," was the answer.

The

and the present Assembly is not to separate until it has voted the organic laws which are to complete the constitution.

entirely remodelled. The principal modification in this part consists in the suppression of the absolute right of labor, for which is substituted protection within the limit of the resources of the state. and encouragement accorded to the working-classes president of the republic is, as before, to be elected by universal suffrage and by ballot; but with this restriction, that he must never have lost the quality of Frenchman-a reservation inserted to meet the case of Louis Napoleon. The new draft maintains the amount of 600,000fr. as the salary of the president. This point was received with a mixture of murmurs and approbation, some of the representatives apparently considering the sum too elevated, whilst others evidently thought it quite unequal to meet the obligations to which the head of the state in France was certain to be liable. The represenApropos of the military; the colonel of a regi- tatives are, as before, to receive an indemnity which ment of cuirassiers, which was stationed on the they cannot renounce. Substitutes in the army are Place de la Concorde, on the critical 24th of June, again interdicted. This article was received with very decided disapprobation. A new article decides related, in my hearing, this anecdote. About that an express law is to regulate the cases in which 11 o'clock in the morning, a gentleman of fine a state of siege, or martial law, can be proclaimed. appearance, and well-mounted, accompanied by Lastly, the president of the republic is to be nomitwo other equestrians, rode up to him and ex-nated immediately after the vote of the constitution, claimed "You are not on the right spot; follow, and I will show you where you ought to be." The colonel replied, "Sir, I obey no directions except those of my general."—" But, colonel, you do not know who I am; I am Lamartine."—" I am happy to see so distinguished a personage: I repeat, however, that I am at the disposal of my commander alone." The poet paused, as if disappointed, and then moved off, lowering his hat. Another of my guests, of unquestionable honor, related the mode of M. Guizot's escape from Paris, as follows: "Next door to him (the representative) is a lady who was the intimate friend of M. Guizot's first wife, and maintained with the minister relations of devoted friendship. To her he repaired, in the evening of the 24th February for refuge; she put him in an upper room in bed, drew the curtains close; caused him to be fed by a confidential servant; represented to her house hold, the patient as a female friend near her accouchement; on the third night adjusted a black beard and thick mustaches to his face, fitted him with a cap and blouse, and had him conducted to the northern rail-road station, whence he reached Belgium."

Yesterday afternoon, the definitive draft of the constitution was reported to the Assembly. The twelve chapters, distributed into a hundred and twenty-eight articles, commanded an attentive hearing in full convocation. You may remember that the instrument was first framed by a special committee of seventeen representatives; then thoroughly examined in the fifteen standing committees, each of which delegated one of its ablest members to communicate their conclusions to the framers, and argue the modifications which it held desirable. The present text is the result of all the deliberations. You have an abstract enclosed, and

here is a brief notice.

The preamble, which contains the political declaration of faith of the French people, has been

A Senate is not admitted, but representatives of the highest authority are prepared to urge this institution, with a conviction that ultimate success without it is impossible. The interdict on substitution in the regular army cannot prevail. Nothing more unequal or inequitable for individuals— nothing more injurious to the loftiest interests and aspirations of a civilized people, could be devised than universal compulsory service; the largest portion of the youth, particularly, may prove far more useful and hopeful elsehow than in garrison, camp, or field-life. But the minister of war promises the annexed new plan of recruitment.

At present the yearly contingent is fixed by canton, in proportion to the number of young men inscribed. The consequence is, that there is a heavy charge left to the departments with unhealthy and weak populations, and an advantage to those with a healthy one. Henceforward the contingent will be population fit for service. In principle, the military also fixed per canton, but only in proportion to the service is to be either personal or pecuniary; once that the lot declares against a young man, he must set out; if not, he must pay a sum of money, just the same as the man declared to be unfit for service; for, whether fortune favors, or nature, or events, have placed any one in the category of unfit for service, being left behind to the benefits of society, he must aid in its charges, in one way or the other -by service or by payment of a sum of money. At present, out of eighty thousand men called on to serve each year, there are twenty thousand substitutes, costing to their families about forty-five million francs. That tax, in place of being distributed amongst twenty thousand families, will be extended to seventy-five thousand at least. In this way, the minister considers that substitutes in the army, to which system he is inimical, may be rendered unnecessary.

The question whether the Assembly should remain to enact organic laws, threatened discord; the

of rending its own work, the pact of its own safety and the public weal. The charter of 1830 was, no selves who destroyed it. Let us endeavor to make doubt, a very bad one, since it was the people thema better, and, above all, let us carry it into execution when it is made. Let us not inscribe liberty on a sheet of paper, and create despotism by our acts. To have liberty, we must truly love it and cherish it in our hearts. This is what must be understood in framing all constitutions, for without it even Solon and Lycurgus united would produce

only a dead letter.

It is curious, besides, to remark the view taken of the present political situation by La Réforme, the organ of Ledru-Rollin and Flocon-the journal whose editors and clique were associated with the National, as partners in the revolution of February, and the first division of the loaves and fishes :

representatives, ex-deputies, were supposed to wish | try was perfectly contented with it. It was the the early election of a new body, from the per- restoration which committed the unpardonable fault suasion that the commissaries of the provisional government and the allies of the red republic, who have seats, would be excluded; the legitimists might expect a considerable accession to their benches. On the other hand, the junto of the National and all its auxiliaries and dependents, and the Montagnards, naturally dreaded and deprecated a change, which, for them, must certainly prove disadvantageous, if not fatal. It was seen by the results of the elections for the municipalities and the councils-general of the departments, that the old republican school scarcely retained a footing in the interior. The voters, however, did not average more than a third of the qualified mass, and the supineness was with the party of order-the peasantry and the petty traders, who, if drawn forth on a great occasion, would preponderate incalculably more against the revolution of February and all the Thanks to our faults, to our follies, to our weakcabals and factions by which it was first turned to ness; thanks to certain illusions, which will at a account. In many cantons, the number of voters- later period be fruitful in remorse, we are all laborwith universal suffrage-was not beyond that of the ing for the funeral of the republic! The republic! era of close monopoly under Louis Philippe. The After five months, it presents the following balance-sheet ten thousand men in prison, hunger reception of the articles, styled transient, which amongst the masses, despair below, anxiety above, prescribes the continuance of the present Assembly, care everywhere; liberties gagged, glory absent; indicated a favor so general as to settle dispute. poetry, the arts, information, extinguished; an Scandal whispers that the per diem of twenty-five assembly which decimates itself, a burgess class francs operates a little, for a large portion of the which is irritated from suffering; and, for all hope, representatives came with lean purses. The patri-a constitution which is about to sprout up in the otic wish to establish Cavaignac in power. It is Such are the things calculated that the choice of the country may be secured for him. All the parties and journals, other than the legitimists, scout or affect to deride the notion of a majority for Henry V. However, the wind in the capital turns in his favor, and may THE demolition, by the present ministry and the blow strongly in many provincial quarters. What Assembly, of the decrees of the provisional governa strange dilemma, if the proscribed Bourbon should ment proceeds at a round pace. Those which be carried! Should his majority be very consider- abolished imprisonment for debt, and the tolls on able what old laws of banishment or new republican meat, and the salt-tax, and which limited manual edicts could withstand the momentum, especially labor to ten and eleven hours the day, and prohibif an Assembly favorable to an hereditary executive ited artisanship in the prisons, are all under condign be returned by the first elections under the consti- sentence. The minister of finance says to the comtution! Let me show you how a journal so impor-mittee-The treasury cannot part with the impost tant as the Débats treats the matter of the present eclectic constitution :

After all, one constitution more in our revolutionary history is in our eyes, if we may be allowed so to say, but an incident of the second order. In the matter of constitutions, we have completely exhausted everything. We must see constitutions at work. The best will be that which shall give to France, not the most words and the finest promises, but the most liberty and the greatest real prosperity. This depends upon the men who govern, much more than upon the letter of a constitution. The constitution of 1791 was not so defective as it has been represented. It would have worked well, if the men of those times would have suffered it. The Directory fell by the men who composed it, and not at all by the constitution of An III., which was as good for it as any other. The constitution of An VIII., had it been faithfully carried into execution, would have still left to France a great portion of her liberties. As to the charter of 1814, the coun

midst of these disasters.

which we have hitherto done to continue the great republic! Ah! they who died in February, are not the only martyrs!

Paris, 31st August, 1848.

on salt, as it is now collected, whatever the harm to the poorer classes or to agriculture; the necessities of the moment are too obstreperous to be resisted. He proposes a reorganization of the Monts-de-Piété-pawnbroking establishments, such as shall put them entirely in the hands of the government. The bill for taxing all income from all personal property is generally approved in the committees, as indispensable for the treasury.

Observe what the London Times of the 28th says of British fiscality:

There is no good in attempting to blink the fact that the budget of this year is very unsatisfactory. Our expenses are exceeding our income by no less than £2,000,000 a year! To make good the deficiency, there are three courses generally open ;the first is to impose additional taxes; the second is to borrow money; the third is to retrench expenditure. The first was signally discouraged by the house some months ago; and the votes on the

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 230.-14 OCTOBER, 1848.

[About twenty years ago we received from England a volume of Sermons, by the author of the work reviewed in the following article. It stood on the shelves for a year or two unread; but when read, we deeply lamented the loss of the time in which we might have profited by it, and determined to read it once a year ever after. This, alas! we have not done; but it will not seem light praise of such a volume to say that we have reperused it several times. The title is, "The Church of God." It is so delightful a book, that we shall lose no time in sending to England for a new work of the same author.-LIV. AGE.]

From the Church of England Quarterly Review. The Ministry of the Body. By the REV. ROBERT WILSON EVANS, B. D., Vicar of Heversham, Westmoreland, and late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Author of "The Rectory of Valehead," &c. London: 1847.

the materials of which our globe is constituted. Unless, therefore, the writer of the book of Genesis can be supposed to have been master of such a chemical analysis as has enabled subsequent physiologists to prove that this is the actual constitution of the human body, it must be granted that he was taught it in some other way; and, as we deem it quite incredible that there was any depository of higher earthly knowledge of his times than the writer of this book, we conclude confidently that the authority which made the discovery and emboldened him to put it forth-not as an hypothesis, but as a certain truth-that man's body is made of the "dust of the ground," was God.

Hence, then, as scientific investigations have proved that the first part-the only one within the limits of science-of this description of humanity

THE only credible account of the origin and formation of man is to be found in one of the earli-viz., that man's entire body is substantially made est extant literary records :-"The Lord God of the “dust of the ground," is true, and could not, formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed in those early times, have been a scientific discovinto his nostrils the breath of life, and man became ery; therefore, we conclude that the latter part a living soul." (Genesis ii. 7.) The prima facie of this description-which, being beyond the limits evidence that this descriptive account is authorita- of science, must have been revealed-is also true tive seems to us to be irresistible, as no competent-namely, that the invisible ens which vitalizeg reader of the Mosaic records will believe that they this compound of earthly materials is what is called were composed under the lights of human science. the soul, or spirit; so that the highest generalIndeed, the attacks made upon their author by in- | ization of man is still that put forth by Moses, and fidels, on the ground of his ignorance of physical has not been advanced by any subsequent investiscience, save us the trouble of endeavoring to es- gations. The achievements of science have proved tablish this point; and yet we offer the alternative that these words of an unscientific writer concernthat this account of the origin of man must have ing the human body express a perfect truth; and been discovered either by a divine revelation or by the most careful experiences of all subsequent scientific investigations; for we cannot persuade generations-the only mode of testing its truth— ourselves to regard it as possible that any super- confirm the latter. This simple division of man ficial examination of the human body, before the into body and soul seems in the best manner to dawn of formal science, could have suggested the serve all those practical views which regard the fact that all its parts were composed of the same past, present, and future of individual history. It materials as the surrounding earthly objects. The regards him as consisting of the perishable (popudiscovery that the body is a part of the great sys- larly speaking) substance, body, and of the impertem of external nature-the same mechanically and ishable ens, soul; each being considered as a chemically, living and decaying like all other living whole, divisible into its elementary functions, and things must surely be assigned to revelation or to be dealt with, in the contemplation of certain higher science. The mere observation of a dead revealed final issues, as separate wholes. The body, which had been left to the action of the deductions from these facts supply the only reasonelements, would conduct to the discovery that its able solution of some of the most interesting probbones would ere long moulder away, and become lems of human life. hardly distinguishable from the surrounding portions of earth. But that all the component parts of a human body-flesh, nerves, bones, blood, &c. -should, according to proved natural laws, become decomposed into terrestrial elements, could not, it seems self-evident, be so determined by an unscientific observer in the primitive ages of the world as to lead to such a confident affirmation of its elementary composition as that formally put forth by Moses. Chemical analysis could alone prove that the human body in all its parts is made up of

For our own immediate purpose, we think this simple division less encumbered with difficulties than the one adopted by Mr. Evans and others, as if St. Paul intended to give a perfect definition of man in the terms "spirit, soul, and body." (1 Thess. v. 2, 3.) This, as is well known, was the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, Platonists, and Stoics, and may find respectable support from metaphysics and word-criticism. Macknight's solution, however, of this kind of phraseology is so frequently used in defence of similar modes of speaking in

the sacred writers that it may be quoted in defence pertinent inquiry now, as of old, is, "How are the of the popular view :-" The apostle's design was dead raised up, and with what body do they to teach mankind religion, and not philosophy; he come?" It is not long since a difficulty was sugmight use the popular language to which the Thes-gested to us, from no unfriendly quarter, as to the salonians were accustomed, without adopting the impossibility of any popular or reasonable interphilosophy on which that language was founded; pretation of the term resurrection, by pointing out consequently, that his prayer means no more but the fact that human bodies are imported from forthat they might be thoroughly sanctified, of how eign graveyards into England to be ground into many constituent parts howsoever their nature con- bone-dust for agricultural purposes. We were sisted." It is no part, however, of our purpose to told that this difficulty presses heavily upon the discuss the question whether men and animals alike minds of some thinking, serious persons who have consist of body and soul, the highest difference be- observed this fact, and drawn their own conclusions ing constituted by the addition to the former of from it. For how, it is asked, can any distinction spirit. We femark only, that we do not lay much be made under such circumstances? Indeed, our stress upon the criticism which extracts definitions churchyards and cemeteries seem not unnaturally from Gen. i. 26, and ii. 7, as it might tend to the to suggest the idea of ownership; and we ourselves conclusion that, for however brief a period, man knew a pious lady, of family rank, who expressed was created without spirit—that is, he was merely a desire that her coffin might be deposited in the an animal. We fear, moreover, that it would re- grave with its lid unscrewed, that no impediment quire much profitless trouble to attempt to make might exist in the way of her instant obedience to clear to our people this elementary piece of meta- the summons of the archangel's trump! If this physics as explained by Mr. Evans, and still more marks a state of ignorance not unmixed with irrevto purge our best theology of the old nomenclature.erence, yet does it also exhibit that popular notion For our own practical purposes, of putting forth of ownership at the resurrection, which, we fear, some remarks upon the relative importance of the makes many secret doubters or unbelievers. To component parts of man, the old division, therefore, the friend who suggested to us the above popular seems sufficient. Moreover, we shall thus escape difficulty, we replied at the time by pointing out the inconvenient inquiry as to whether the soul and the gross absurdity of predicating the limits of time spirit are of the same nature or not. When looking and space of Him who fabricated those rolling orbs upon a human skeleton, we see the fate of one of over our own heads, and of presenting the apparent these three component parts-the body. Of another, difficulties of a paltry sheet of salt water before we only know by revelation that the spirit is gone Him "who hath measured the waters in the holto God that gave it. But what has become to the low of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, , the yuz, the soul? How shall we and comprehended the dust of the earth in a explain the doctrine of this verse: "Who know-measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, eth the spirit (H) of a man that goeth upward, and the hills in a balance." (Isaiah xl. 12.) and the spirit (H) of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?" (Eccles. iii. 21.) This must be of the nature either of the body or the spirit. If it belongs to the former, it must perish with it; and if it belongs to the latter, it still survives; and then does not that of animalculæ, &c., also ? We would, therefore, still retain the old division, in endeavoring to assign the relative positions of the bodily and the spiritual during their earthly probation, though we are very far from regarding the question as unimportant, or from insinuating that Mr. Evans has not written ably upon it.

But there is another solution which may help to free the subject from all such literal difficulties. Amongst other purposes which the materials of our globe are designed to serve, one is for the fabrication of the human body. We have shown it to be a point of revelation that Adam's body was made of these preexisting materials; nor can we believe that, chemically speaking, none but those identical portions which were actually made use of could have produced that organized frame with all its constitutional peculiarities. We cannot bring ourselves to imagine that any peculiarity exists in the decomposed materials of any two In examining the ulterior grounds of the necessity human bodies to constitute essential identity—that for the sanctification of the body, it seems requisite, is, that there is something essentially peculiar in in limine, to allude to the popular difficulties pre- the "dust" of one which there is not in that of sented by the doctrine of its future resurrection. the other. The actual and distinctive framework It must be acknowledged that there seems to be a of Adam and of every human being is something degree of impertinence, so to speak, in demanding real, and altogether arbitrary of any parental arthe literalities of this doctrine, which conscious ig-rangements; but we do not suppose that the norance usually foregoes in speaking of the future"dust" of one might not serve the purpose of the destinies of the soul. Fools, to be sure, rush in reorganization of another, if reanimation were where angels fear to tread; but whilst it is useless required. Certainly, this hypothesis presents no to notice their exceptions, the rule is to believe that after death the soul exists somewhere separately from the body, waiting the arrival of the period appointed for their reunion, by what is called the resurrection of the latter. But the im

practical difficulties to the reason, though the peculiarities of individual physical organization present such as might be fairly used to show abstractedly the limits of even guessing. The color of the complexion and the hair, and those nameless dif